Speech rate of short vs. long interrogative sentences in human-directed vs. device-directed dialectal Arabic speech
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/TheLinguisticProceedings/2025/16/01/002/000662Keywords:
device-directed speech, human-directed speech, dialectal Arabic, speech rate, age differencesAbstract
This paper examines speech pattern adjustments made by female dialectal Arabic speakers when addressing an AI voice assistant compared to a close interlocutor and a stranger across different age groups. Participants were presented with ten interrogative sentences controlling for syllabic length (short vs. long) and directed each set towards the three addressees. Speech rate was then measured. The results showed an overall average speech rate of 5.41 syllables per second (SpS), with adults speaking slightly faster than teenagers. Speech was fastest when directed towards a familiar interlocutor (SpS = 5.54), followed by an unfamiliar interlocutor (SpS = 5.48), and slowest when directed towards the AI assistant (SpS = 5.21). Utterance length also influenced speech rate, with shorter utterances articulated more rapidly than longer ones. The findings highlight the influence of interlocutor type on speech behaviour and support further research into additional acoustic features and gender-related differences.
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Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
